Increasingly consumers are conducting financial transactions through Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) without the assistance of a clerk. In fact, in many cases these transactions are conducted without any store staff in the vicinity of the SSTs.
Although technology from SST transactions has advanced significantly in recent years, one aspect of SST transactions has remained relatively static and unchanged. This area is associated with SST lane signs/lamps that provide information about a status of an SST to customers and store staff in a binary fashion.
For example, most SST lane signs/lamps have painted SST number identifiers that are elevated above the SST lane to which they are associated. The signs may also have a status indicator for an “open” or a “closed” status. The signs/lamps user, perhaps, different color lights to illuminate the SST lane numbers and status indicator.
Such arrangements fail to provide any valuable information to a customer or to store staff that services the SSTs. Moreover, these arrangements are inflexible, such that current configurations are incapable of communicating any truly interactive information to the customers and store staff.
Furthermore, the SSTs are devices having processing, memory, and storage capabilities. These resources are often grossly underutilized by the store, since SSTs are infrequently loaded with a steady and consistent stream of customers. Also, even if a customer is transacting on an SST, the SST resources could easily handle additional processing responsibilities for the store, which can be related to the transaction or entirely unrelated to the transaction.
Additionally, product placement and advertisements provide a store with a needed and lucrative revenue source from vendors. Stores would be very interested in expanding such revenues without occupying any new space within the store and without entailing any significant additional investment/resources to accomplish such revenues.